Climate change-aware individuals and their meat consumption: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

This paper explores whether climate change-aware individuals (i.e. people who list climate change as the most urgent environmental issue) have lower consumption levels of several types of meat, including beef, pork, chicken, and processed meat. In addition, the study measures the extent to which such an association varied over time in response to the increasing percentage of climate change-aware individuals in the population, as recorded between 2014 and 2019. The study uses a population-based sample of individual data (n = 51,208) collected at two points, namely in 2014 and 2019, across all the regions of Italy. Data collection was done by the Italian National Bureau of Statistics as part of the annual Italian Multipurpose Households Survey (MHS). The data encompasses respondents' socioeconomic characteristics, eating habits, and health-friendly and environmentally-friendly behaviors. Multivariate ordered logit regression was used to analyze the data. The study's findings suggest that climate change-aware individuals are likely to consume red meat (beef and pork) less frequently than people who lack such awareness. Furthermore, the likelihood of reducing the intake of red meat increased over time among climate change-aware individuals. In contrast, no correlation was found between climate-change awareness and the consumption of chicken and processed meat. Results indicate that older, well-educated, and wealthy individuals display a lower consumption frequency for all meat types. Consumers of organic food and individuals who have adopted health- friendly and environmentally-friendly behaviors are also less likely to consume meat, especially red meat.